I have noticed that you have employed as your new Executive General Manager of Member Services Jeff Hughes. Let me just give you some background on his time at CPA Australia where he recently departed as COO - Member Services.

He, as one of the three senior management team (with Alex Malley CEO, and Adam Awty as the other COO), and the board of twelve directors comprised the leadership of CPA Australia. They were ALL either sacked or resigned in 2017 because of the mess they created and shenanigans they got up to in our organisation.

You may have read of this in the media (AFR. The Australian, ABC) in 2017 when this was exposed.

1. Scandalous remuneration levels (for example Jeff Hughes was on over $900,000 p.a.) and we never knew because they refused to give us a full break-down of the leaderships remuneration. We only found out when we forced them to provide it, which they reluctantly did, and when it was disclosed, they were all gone by the end of the year such was the scandalous nature of it.2. Membership numbers misreporting and exaggeration.3. Governance failures such that a small cabal of leaders (board and senior managers) held almost unchecked and complete power.4. Millions wasted promoting the CEO Alex Malley (book, TV program, sporting sponsorships, billboards etc) rather than the profession, the organisation and the members.5. Minimum disclosure and reporting to keep members ‘in the dark’.6. Aggressive opposition to members who asked questions of what was going on.7. Classifying members as friendlies or not depending upon whether they asked pesky questions on these issues.8. Conflicts of interest with gifts to NBA (Chair of CPA also Chair of NBA) of $756,000, and an unknown (they refuse to tell us, we guess about $300,000) amount to South Sydney Rugby League Club because the CEO was a supporter.9. A membership culture of non-engagement and disinterest developed accordingly.10. Professional development offerings increasingly both irrelevant and costly.11. Establishment of loss making subsidiary where ‘rent seeking’ prevailed. They evaded remuneration controls in the constitution and that enabled many of the leaders to top up already scandalous salaries with even more. Included in this list was none other than Jeff Hughes getting a cool $300,000 on top of his already scandalously high full time management salary. Have a read of the above attached whitewash article to see the details. It's not very pretty.
I could go on.

We had to force the leadership to resign, and had to spend $1million to have an Independent Review to corroborate the above, and another $600,000 for PwC to review the subsidiary (point 11) to close it down.

I’m sure you are asking what does this have to do with Engineers Australia?

Fair enough it is our problem and we are endeavouring to resolve it and fix up the enormous damage done to our organisation, the profession and the designation.

But I think Engineers Australia members should be aware that one of the leaders of CPA Australia, and actively involved in many of the above was your new Executive Manager of Member Services, and why he had to leave at the end of 2017.

After all of the above none of the leaders (board and senior managers) responsible have ever acknowledged any regret or expressed any apologies for what they did. They fought all the way stubbornly refusing when even the obvious was ‘poking them in the eye’. Having ‘skin as think as a herd of elephants’ can be a virtue but not when you have done the wrong thing and refuse to admit it.

I sure hope you have done your due diligence.

Attached is an email he sent to me in March 2017 just after I raised questions about some of the above matters (and three months before all hell broke loose when these things were clearly exposed with evidence). It’s a great example of ‘management speak’ gone mad, and trying to defend the indefensible. No concerns re. public issue as the management and board of CPA freely distributed this to members immediately after sending it to me. Most of the defences he spoke of were shown to be demonstrable wrong in later months. Note especially the reference to the remuneration disclosure being full and holding no secrets. It was anything but as later revelations showed. Just as with the governance - it was hubris at best that he describes, and later events proved that.

We have enough problems of our own at CPA Australia currently to fix up but I thought it worth giving you a ‘heads up’. I would hate for you to have to go through what we have been through. I trust your board and senior management are aware of what really happened at CPA Australia.

If you want any further information to corroborate this you can refer to the CPA Australia website (www.cpaaustralia.com.au) for the Independent Reviews, and also my website where I have written a few blogs (www.excellere.com.au). Google up CPA Australia and the AFR (Joe Aston, or Edmund Tadros) and you will get even more confirmation. Make sure you see the AFR Rear Window article by Bryce Corbett which shows the classification system of members utilised by Jeff Hughes into friendlies or not to ‘downplay and keep quiet’ members concerned on these issues.

I have linked various articles to this post ion my LinkedIn post or on my blog on the website (www.excellere.comau)